Good Copy Bad Copy is "a documentary about the current state of copyright and culture," featuring Danger Mouse, Lawrence Lessig, Dan Glickman of the MPAA and others. The film's creators are releasing it free of charge, via Bittorrent.
posted by jbickers
on Aug 3, 2007 -
30 comments

The new DMCA: the Intellectual Property Protection Act of 2006The 24-page bill is a far-reaching medley of different proposals cobbled together. One would, for instance, create a new federal crime of just trying to commit copyright infringement. Such willful attempts at piracy, even if they fail, could be punished by up to 10 years in prison.
posted by beth
on Apr 26, 2006 -
36 comments

Welcome to the scene is an interesting low budget soap opera that tells the story of a movie piracy group's workings via IMs and simultaneous video. If you're interested in the logistics of movie piracy (how do these groups work? what's their motivation? where do they get the movies? how do they avoid getting caught?) then this is for you. The story gets more engrossing as you go through the episodes, and the latest gives some insight into how script kiddies do their business. I'd never heard of tools like Metasploit and fragroute till I saw it. There are those who think the whole thing's a setup... I personally doubt it, but one thing this series demonstrates is that for pirates, paranoia is key to survival.
posted by jcruelty
on Nov 3, 2005 -
13 comments

The "ransom" model."It works like this: They described the basic gist of the game on their web site, and set a ransom of $600 for it. If they received $600 in donations by September 2005, they would finish creating the game -- and then release it on their site, for anyone to download for free. (If they didn't get the full $600 in time, they would donate whatever money they'd received to a homeless shelter.)" And it worked! Here's some additional links described in the comments: The Street Performer Protocol and Fundable.org.
posted by gsb
on Jun 7, 2005 -
15 comments

Darknet Blog - Interesting articles about what is shaping technology today, and how the industry is playing nice with the government to legislate drm into our lives.
posted by sourbrew
on May 28, 2005 -
4 comments

LokiTorrent was a popular spot to get movies and they even put up a fight against the recent crackdown, raising thousands in a legal defense fund. Today, it seems the MPAA won, forcing the owner to shut down. That's understandable and I'm not surprised, but they've gone a bit further than I expected, turning the site into a big scary ad against filesharing and warning that you're next. Even worse, the old owner is turning the logs over to the MPAA, for them to go after folks.
posted by mathowie
on Feb 10, 2005 -
110 comments

After the FBI raid five pople's homes (and the offices of one ISP) seizing their equipment for operating a "network" sharing the equivalent of 60,000 movies or 10.5 million songs (according to Mr Ashcroft) as part of Operation Digital Gridlock's attempts to crack the "organisation" known as The Underground Network (and perhaps to rail against the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' recent decision backing up the legality of P2P networks) one of those raided - "The Answer Man" - contacts P2Pnet, to give the inside scoop and talk about the distortions created by the media reporting of the case. [Thanks Squeak]
posted by Blue Stone
on Aug 27, 2004 -
20 comments

The file-sharing fight continues.Recording industry associations in Denmark, Germany, Italy and Canada have filed lawsuits or taken other legal action, aiming mainly at heavy users accused of offering a large number of songs online.

In other news, A study of file-sharing's effects on music sales says online music trading appears to have had little part in the recent slide in CD sales.
posted by ashbury
on Mar 31, 2004 -
9 comments

Europe's not-too-modest anti-piracy proposal. If accepted, it means that "not only could a teenager who downloaded a music file be sent to jail under it; so too could managers of the Internet service provider that the teenager happened to use, whether they knew what the teenager was doing or not." The proposal is being spearheaded by French parliamentarian Janelly Fourtou. Coincidentally enough, her husband is the chief executive of Vivendi Universal.
posted by Ljubljana
on Oct 19, 2003 -
9 comments

Killing the music Who is the real enemy here? Mefites argue on whether downloading the latest eminem is theft or merely copyright infringement. RIAA says this activity is killing CD sales and wants to slap a lawsuit on everyone with a cable modem. Everyone seems to be missing the real culprit here. [via Ars-technica]
posted by Nauip
on Aug 5, 2003 -
128 comments

"Movies: They're worth it!" In a move to educate those darn thieving kids and their evil P2P file-sharing networks which are used to trade ripped movies, the MPAA has launched a public service campaign to explain, in layman's terms, why violating their copyrights is wrong. …Yes, these are the same people who have just brought us an entire summer of bloated sequels, shameless celebrity vehicles and uninspired hack-work. Respect!
posted by Down10
on Aug 3, 2003 -
81 comments

Buymusic.com may be acquiring their “300,000 song” music catalog from distributors who have no rights to the digital distribution of the songs. In other words, piracy on a massive, corporate, for profit scale.
posted by alan
on Jul 29, 2003 -
22 comments

MJ pro-tech, anti-jail: "I am speechless about the idea of putting music fans -- mostly teenagers -- in jail for downloading music," he said in a statement from his Neverland Ranch in the western state of California.
"It is wrong to illegally download, but the answer cannot be jail. Here in America we create new opportunities out of adversity, not punitive laws, and we should look to new technologies ... for solutions. This way, innovation continues to be the hallmark of America. It is the fans that drive the success of the music."
posted by allaboutgeorge
on Jul 22, 2003 -
23 comments

DirecTV Suing Consumers Directly Everyone identified in those records was sent a letter by DirecTV promising that the company would forgo litigation if they would surrender their illegal access devices, promise never to buy them again, and pay damages of approximately $3,500, Mercer said. Many people complied. Article here.
So far, 8,700 consumers who balked have been hit with federal civil suits alleging violations of the Federal Communications Act and federal wiretap statutes. That includes approximately 5,000 lawsuits filed nationwide in May, Mercer said. Newspapers in Richmond, Va., and Allentown, Pa., recently have reported the filing of numerous federal signal theft suits in those states by DirecTV.
posted by Niahmas
on Jun 17, 2003 -
50 comments

The NY Times reports that music companies are considering some new anti-piracy measures of questionable legality. The ideas include a program to lock up user's computers, another to find and delete illegally downloaded files, and what amounts to a DoS attack on user's computers. There are some supporters of these possibly extralegal measures. Representative Howard Berman (D-CA) introduced a bill last year to provide the music industry with a "safe harbor from liability" when pursuing P2P traders. Should media companies be allowed to operate outside the law in their efforts to stop illegal downloads of their music?
posted by punishinglemur
on May 3, 2003 -
23 comments

Justice Department Seizes Top Internet Site Involved In Copyright Piracy"The leading public Internet site dedicated to online copyright piracy was seized by the Justice Department today. Assistant Attorney General Michael Chertoff and Paul J. McNulty, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia today announced the seizure of www.iSONEWS.com as part of a previous plea agreement entered into by a defendant convicted of violating the criminal copyright laws."Law enforcement seizes computers everyday for one reason or another, but leaving the site up and displaying a rather finger-wagging message is a new one!
posted by quonsar
on Feb 26, 2003 -
36 comments

European music copyrights from the '50s due to expire this year, and to grossly oversimplify things, RIAA is on the warpath, saying that imports from there would be acts of piracy. Considering that there's a gold mine's worth of material begging to be shown the light again (the Maria Callas material mentioned in the article, for example), no doubt there will be some great releases...but will EMI's actions be more the exception than the rule? (NYT link, yadayada)
posted by PeteyStock
on Jan 2, 2003 -
17 comments

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